


i'd give in if it could at least be ours alone

by orphan_account



Category: Joker (2019), Taxi Driver (1976)
Genre: Homicide, M/M, boys get therapy please, hatred of society??, implied travis/arthur until further notice, it'll get there probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Maybe, within a different world, within a different scene, within a different setting, their purposes would’ve aligned and everything would have made sense. Maybe their purposes are the same. In the end, it’s a comforting thought to be set apart from the rest of the scum of Gotham’s streets. Him and Arthur.
Relationships: Travis Bickle/Arthur Fleck
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So like the events of taxi driver didn't happen but some of them did like the whole iris thing exists but betsy and palantine dont?? Wayne is travis's palantine and travis lived in Gotham all along. That's what's going on here. 
> 
> I do not promote the choices these boys made and idk why i wrote this it just seemed on the fly. maybe they can get therapy and learn to get past their traumas idk. i apologize. i do apologize to baby bruce wayne. 
> 
> hopefully i can add on some chapters and get this story out of the weird feel it's taken on.

All the animals come out at night, among those animals is Thomas Wayne, whose views are corrupted and self-centered. A puppet posing for the other selfish and venal scum polluting the streets. Someday, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets. 

Wayne’s face is everywhere nowadays, once just a mildly important mayoral candidate, now an always constant headline feature. If he’s not taking up the television screen in Travis’s apartment, he’s occupying billboards and signs in the outside world. He’s pissed everyone off. Rightfully so. 

Travis hears about the subway murders, about a now undistinguishable clown terrorizing the rich and privileged. Everyone’s a clown, everyone’s a protester. If it’s not Wayne’s face Travis can’t seem to escape, it’s definitely those cheap plastic clown masks. A good place to preach against the poor, one of the most poverty-filled cities in the world. 

The city is pissed, a pack of wild dogs turning on each other, but nobody’s making a move. Random killings here and there, a few yuppies turn up missing, do they really think that’s sending a message to Wayne? Travis isn’t sure what his own mission is, but he thinks it’s to send a message. One that will ring in the ears of the entire city for years to come. Here is a man who would not take it anymore, here is…

His life, pointing in one direction. As does everyone else’s. All the events you lead and the chances you take all lead towards your demise. Travis finds one of the cheap clown masks left behind in the back seat of his cab after returning it to the garage, and it feels like a chance. 

Murray Franklin has been killed. Maybe that feels like a chance, too. 

The city is alive tonight. Fires, riots. Travis feels calm, his stride steady as he walks down the downtown street of what is now the ruins of Gotham City. 

Everyone seems to be looking for the self-admitted subway murderer who killed Murray Franklin just minutes ago. With a sea full of clown faces and the likelihood of the very man being locked far away in a prison states away by now, Travis has to admit their motivation is hopeless. Still, it’s easy to get lost in the warm chaos that’s overtaken the streets. 

A family: a man, a woman, and boy, huddled together against the world around them, hurry past Travis and he recognizes the man almost instantly. By this point, maybe Travis would recognize him before he would himself. 

Wayne. 

With all chances come choices. Travis picks himself up off the building wall he’s leaned against and follows after them. As if he’s not thinking anymore, as if his body is moving of its own free will. His entire life headed towards this very moment. 

They duck into an alleyway, moving briskly away from the chaos that Wayne himself has created. Travis takes long, purposeful steps to keep up. He’s focused now. He calls out Wayne’s name in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own. Thomas Wayne turns to face him, as does his wife, as does his son. A moment of regret passes over him, then a moment of resolution. His gun is raised, already pointing at Wayne, and before Travis can think, he’s pulled the trigger. 

Pearls, scattered across the dirty grime filled concrete. The face of an innocent boy who’s just witnessed something from which he’ll never recover. Travis thinks of Iris. An innocent soul, too far gone to escape her own fate. Still, Travis is in a haze. 

Travis walks back out into the streets, among the intersection total havoc. Overturned cars, wrecked police cars, and amidst it all, there he is. The man who sent the message. Here is… 

But it’s not Travis. 

Greasy, green hair, falling in his face as he moves. Messy streaks of paint that’s unrecognizable from the blood on his face. They cheer for him, like rabid, ravenous animals. All the animals come out at night. Within a few minutes, a few cops will discover Wayne’s body and they’ll come for Travis. Yet, his message means nothing.

Travis first sees him at the intersection on Halsey street. He is wearing a suit, covered in blood, covered in regret, covered in sheer disarray. He vibrates with the crowd, their noise fueling him forward. He appears like an angel among the filth. All their grubby faces staring up at him like he is the next prophet. Yet he is alone. They can not touch him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I am asking for your forgiveness

Yelling, screaming. Fire, engulfing almost every surface of the Gotham City streets. Travis feels like he’s in a dream and steps forward, as if in the same trance. The man turns, gracefully, basking in his own creation, and briefly his eyes land on Travis for a fleeting moment before landing back on the crowd surrounding him. 

The eye contact is enough to send a chill through Travis’s body. Jolting, almost, freezing him where he stands. No police ever come, and Travis dreams that night. Foggy hallucinations that he can’t quite remember the details of in the morning when he wakes. But the man’s face, bloodied, cynically smiling, sticks out like the flashiest billboard in the city. 

“Hey, Travis,” Wizard says. “You got a fare.”

Surprisingly, nobody mentions the details of the night before. Or maybe they did, settled between the topics of Wizard’s latest fare or Dough-Boy’s wife so briskly Travis failed to pick up on it. 

Travis focuses, glances in the direction of where he parked his taxi. “Shit.”

He exchanges brief goodbyes and see-ya-laters with Wizard, with Dough-Boy, with Charlie T. and walks off, up to his taxi, and gets in. The overhead light turns on when he opens the driver-side door but before Travis can remind himself to glance in the backseat, he’s already in the car, the door shut, and it’s dark again. So he drives off. 

“Hello, Travis.” The voice seems disembodied, like it doesn’t quite belong, until Travis glances up in the rear-view mirror and sees him. That same face still donned with the clown makeup, except neater this time, and without the blood. The edges of his red painted on smile, of the blue triangles surrounding his eyes, are clean, crisp. Pointed, almost menacingly. 

Travis, nonetheless, as if not threatened, smiles warmly. He imagines he feels the jagged edges of his own smile. “Hello.” 

The man stares at him through the rear-view mirror, not smiling, with an expression so blank Travis feels like he’s looking right through him. 

Travis feels himself open his mouth, as if to say something, and closes it. The man speaks again, his voice coming out scratchy, maybe from over-use or maybe like he hasn’t used it at all. He senses Travis’s loss of words, Travis feels like he can sense every thought that enters his head. “I hear Thomas Wayne was killed last night.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Travis says. He’s not smiling anymore. Instead, his focus is taken to the road in front of him but he can still feel the man staring as if he’s looking right back at him. “He seemed like a good person.” 

The man laughs at this, a small breath of a chuckle. Travis allows himself to glance back and the man’s gaze has drifted to the passing city outside his window. 

Travis pulls up to the curb, and the man gets out. Travis doesn’t glance back anymore, instead grabbing his notepad and writing down the stop. He seems almost acutely aware of the man standing at his driver-side door, and for a second Travis thinks he might shoot him or pull him out of the cab. 

But he doesn’t. Instead, he waits, patiently, and Travis glances over at him, fleetingly, and the man speaks again. “Arthur,” he says, and Travis expects him to stick out his hand but he doesn’t. “My name’s Arthur.” 

Travis has to remind himself that the man already knows his name from the driver tag in the cab, and he nods to Arthur, again smiling. Warmly and kind, like he’s known the man his whole life. Maybe he has. 

“I saw you,” Arthur says, quietly, as if it’s of no more importance than the gloomy weather that’s been hanging over Gotham the past few days. “Last night, you were there. I saw you.” 

Travis continues staring down at his notepad, the words already written, but his pencil hovers over the words as if they’re not finished. Halsey Street. “Thomas Wayne was my father,” Arthur says and Travis focuses on how his own breath feels, steady. Calm. 

Travis looks at Arthur, now. The other man doesn’t meet his gaze. Instead, he stares out at the street, and there’s a smile on his face, like he’s about to laugh but he never does. Instead, the smile just hangs there, as do his words until Travis finds himself saying. “I’m sorry.” 

Now Arthur laughs. 

“Don’t be,” he shrugs it off, his voice more of a chuckle now. “It doesn’t matter, now.” 

His eyes focus back on Travis. “How much is my fare?” As if the current moment has smacked him in the face and Travis finds himself grinning again. 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

He puts the car in drive and pulls off, gaining speed and glancing behind him, as if paranoid the man is still with him. The whole thing feels hazy, like a hallucination. The clown mask leftover from last night, sitting in his passenger seat, is an assurance that it’s not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit ton of dialogue and porno movie first dates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a bit longer than the other chapters. I feel like I struggled with trying to make the dialogue sound in character so please forgive me. Three updates in three days. If only I put this much effort into my midterms. Also, I feel like I've just strictly replaced Betsy with Arthur so um yeah...enjoy!!

Days pass, and Travis almost forgets about Arthur. It’s almost like he’s trying to ignore the turn in his life, the unexpected yet obvious turn that’s happened yet again. It’s almost amazing to think about how the days falter off, linked and blurred together and yet separated into precise little glimpses of memory. 

Travis starts to think maybe he imagined Arthur. It’s a common reoccurring doubt that fills his mind, until one day, it doesn’t. 

In a little diner located a few miles outside of Gotham, where Travis has found a new apartment, because Gotham doesn’t feel safe and it feels like everyone, everywhere knows his face and knows what he’s done. 

And there he is. Without the makeup, and without the green hair dye, he’s almost unrecognizable. But Travis knows him immediately. 

Again, he appears like an angel, gleaming against the filth of the world. Travis walks over to the table where Arthur sets, his head ducked down, like maybe he’s just as paranoid about being recognized as Travis is. Rightfully so. 

Travis isn’t sure what gives him the right, but he sits down in the chair across from him. Arthur looks up and recognizes him too. 

“Hello,” Travis says, leaned in, quietly like he’s afraid someone will overhear. “You don’t mind me joining you, do you?”

“No,” Arthur replies, gesturing to the chair that Travis is already seated in. “be my guest.” 

Arthur stares down at the table in front of him. He has an empty cup a few inches from where his hands rest on the table, which might’ve contained coffee or tea some minutes or maybe hours ago. Without being able to place the reasoning, Travis senses something special about Arthur. Something that keeps drawing him in and in like a moth to a tantalizing flame. 

“I’ve been looking for you, y’know,” Travis speaks, breaking the silence. “I thought I’d never see you again,” 

“Why did you want to?” Arthur asks, again his voice barely above a whisper. He asks the question as if he’s genuinely curious. 

“Because,” Travis hesitates. “I think you’re a lonely person.” Arthur looks up at this, at Travis’s face. 

“I think all this, all of that,” Travis gestures to Arthur, gestures to him as a whole. “The makeup, the outfits, I think it all means nothing.”

“It does mean something,” Arthur interjects, quietly. A faint whisper of words, like he’s afraid Travis will hear him, and then he settles. Looks Travis straight in the eyes. “I’m not sure who I am anymore.”

“You’re you,” Travis answers, as if it’s that simple. Yet, it’s not. He knows it’s not. 

“I think you need something,” Travis says. 

“What?”

“I dunno,” Travis leans back in his seat, sighs, like the whole subject is ridiculous. He lets his gaze falter to the table in front of him, and then the background of the restaurant behind Arthur’s head. “A friend, if you wanna call it that. Someone to listen to you, shit, I dunno. Forget it.”

Arthur laughs. 

“A friend? What are you, then?”

“If you want me to be a friend, then I’ll be your friend.” Travis looks at him, then. Maybe he doesn’t realize Arthur’s been staring at him the entire time, almost unblinking, but then again, what does it matter if he does? 

Arthur doesn’t reply to this, but he’s smiling. A smile, faltered so that maybe if Travis doesn’t look too hard he’d never know he was. But he does, and Travis is smiling, too. 

“Where do you live?” 

Arthur’s tone is evasive. He answers almost too quickly. “Uptown.” 

Travis nods, considers this, decides small-talk questions aren’t the best option right now. They’re both wanted for murder. Little details aren’t important. The fact that they can sit in this restaurant without a pack of cops busting through the door and arresting them is nothing short of a miracle. 

“Do you feel bad about it? About Wayne?” As if Arthur can read his mind, he leans forward and whispers, his words almost dissipating into the air as quietly and quickly as they came. The words hang heavy, though, and Travis has to resist the urge to conform, so he just considers it. Considers the possibility that maybe he doesn’t. 

“I don’t know.” The moment lingers between the two, Travis’s words trailing off and the surrounding noise of the restaurant is the only sound for what seems to be forever. Travis’s brows furrow together, like he doesn’t want to think about it too long. Like he can’t think about it for too long. “Why? How do you feel? How do you feel about-” He stops himself, realizing what he’s asking. 

“I don’t,” 

Travis scoffs, settles back in his seat. Breaths out a breathy unbelieving chuckle maybe to comfort himself, to help him make sense of the situation. “Y’know,” He starts, falters off, trying to find his words, and then starts again. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Arthur.” 

“I can believe that.” 

Arthur sets his jaw. Under the table, his legs are bouncing. Travis has half a mind to get up, leave, but he stays seated, going through his mental list of possible topics. Still, he watches Arthur intently. 

Arthur speaks, instead. His voice coming out tight. “How should I feel about it? Bad? Bad because he was really contributing something to society? He was, to his society, to the rich wall street guys that never even thought about-”

“Look, calm down, it’s alright,” Travis reaches out, on instinct, and his hand settles on top of Arthur’s. Arthur jerks like he’s been scathed. “This isn’t the place, d’you maybe wanna - I dunno - see a movie or something?” 

“What? With you?” Arthur seems genuinely surprised, or maybe he’s just pissed. Travis is finding a hard time reading him, as if he could read him at all. 

“Yeah,” Travis lets himself smile at this. A contagious sort of grin that Arthur mirrors, his own distorted with a confused, almost hesitant alteration. Travis doesn’t have much of a take on him, but he’s interesting. Arthur’s almost damn near fascinating. Travis has never felt himself wanting to know about someone as much as he wants to know about Arthur. And it’s wild, being with him, thinking about him, Travis feels like he knows as much about Arthur as he does himself and yet nothing at all. 

Travis stands, abruptly, and goes over to the counter and pays for Arthur’s coffee. 

~

“So what did you do?” Travis asks when they’re within a few feet from the restaurant and engulfed in the surrounding night of the city streets. “Y’know, before that.”  
“I was a party clown,” Arthur laughs like the question is ridiculous, and Travis finds himself smiling because yeah, it is. “I got fired, though. So I tried being a comedian.” 

“Really? A comedian?” Travis looks at Arthur, who looks at his feet as they walk. “You seem like a funny guy, well, not like that, but-”

“I wasn’t,” Arthur cuts him off, and Travis is almost relieved. “Or at least nobody thought I was, but,” He shrugs, looks up and in front of them. 

“Yeah, but what d’they know?” Travis tries. “They don’t know nothing, I’m sure you’re funny.” 

“You think I’m funny?” Arthur looks at him this time, finally, for what seems like the first time tonight. The smile falters from Travis’s face, his muscles relax and he realizes maybe he’s been tense the whole time. Solace. 

“Yeah,” Travis breathes, and Arthur watches his expression, unfaltering. “Why not?” 

~

Travis leads Arthur up to his usual pick of the select large, garish midtown theatres in the area that he’s familiarized himself with. Arthur is right behind him, tense, as Travis walks up to the window and buys two tickets. He can feel Arthur’s eyes on him and yet when he glances back, Arthur is gazing around them, befuddled. Still, he’s smiling. A toothy, open grin that reads amused. 

“This is a porno movie.” He says, maybe to Travis and maybe to himself. 

“No, this one isn’t like the other movies. People see these movies all the time, they’re okay. I’ve seen ‘em,” Travis seems to stumble over his words, he’s confused. This is a part of his world, these movies. His world, maybe he doesn’t get that could collide with others so profoundly, that could intertwine with Arthur’s so flawlessly. Maybe Travis just feels the thought of getting Arthur into some dark, dingy porno movie is somehow gratifying. 

“You see these kinds of movies?” Arthur asks, and he seems almost beguiled at the thought of Travis seeing these movies in his own free time. 

Travis hesitates. “Well,” He tries, not looking at Arthur, and instead behind Arthur. “Sometimes.” 

Arthur’s still smiling, and lets Travis escort him into the theatre. The two of them say nothing as Travis leads Arthur over to a row of empty seats and he settles into one of the seats, slouched, like he’s done it a hundred times before. Arthur sits beside him, his whole mannerisms screaming that he’s unfamiliar with the setting, but somehow Travis makes him feel relaxed. 

The movie is in French, the only way Travis has any clue of what’s going on in the dialogue is thanks to the English subtitles. Travis watches intently, no idea of how intently the man beside him is watching him.


End file.
